The British Journal of Psychiatry (2005) 186: A1
© 2005 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures
EDITED BY ALLAN BEVERIDGE
Do you have an image, preferably accompanied by 100 to 200 words of
explanatory text, that you think would be suitable for Psychiatry in Pictures?
Submissions are very welcome and should be sent direct to Dr Allan Beveridge,
Queen Margaret Hospital, Whitefield Road, Dunfermline, Fife KY12 0SU, UK.
This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of William A. F. Browne, a
leading figure in 19th-century Scottish lunacy and one of the first asylum
clinicians to take an interest in the artwork of patients. In 1834, while a
physician superintendent at the Montrose Asylum, Browne published his classic
book What Asylums Were, Are and Ought To Be, in which he set out his
vision of how an asylum should be run. For Browne, the key was occupation:
inmates should be kept busy either in work or in recreation. The book came to
the attention of a wealthy philanthropist, Elizabeth Crichton, who persuaded
Browne to take charge of her new asylum in Dumfries, a post he held from 1838
to 1857 before leaving to become one of the first Scottish Commissioners of
Lunacy. As early as 1846 Browne had hired an art instructor and he reported
that patients responded enthusiastically. He went on to collect the work of
his patients, and some 135 works have survived. In 1880 Browne wrote an
article entitled ‘Mad Artists’, which was published in the
Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology. The
accompanying picture is by one of the few unidentified patient-artists in
Browne’s collection. Further work by other patients from the collection,
which is housed in the museum at the Crichton Royal Hospital, will be featured
in subsequent months.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Dr Tom Walmsley and Morag Williams, Archivist to NHS Dumfries and
Galloway, Solway House, Crichton Royal Hospital, Dumfries.
